Jonathan Quick bites back over Tkachuk-Lemieux incident.
Never one to mince words during his tenure with the LA Kings, netminder Jonathan Quick didn’t hold back when it came to the Brendan Lemieux–Brady Tkachuk incident over the weekend.
“I have my own opinion about what happened, or did not happen last night, and what I can tell you is that any comments that were made about Pep were garbage,” Quick said via LA Kings Insider. “He’s a valuable player who sticks up for his teammates. We all support him and I’d rather have him on my team over that kid any day of the week.”
Quick’s comments were in response to Tkachuk’s postgame rant:
“It was the most gutless thing somebody could ever do. This guy, you can ask anyone of his teammates, nobody ever wants to play with him, this guy is a bad guy and a bad teammate, he focuses on himself all the time.
“The guy’s just a joke. He shouldn’t be in the league. This guy’s gutless. No other team wants him, he’s going to keep begging to be in the NHL but no other team is going to want him, he’s an absolute joke. I can’t even wrap my head around it. He’s just a bad guy.
“It’s outrageous. Kids don’t even do that anymore. Babies do that. I don’t even know what he was thinking, he’s just a complete brick head. He’s got nothing up there. Bad guy, bad player but what a joke he is.”
In the third period of Saturday’s 4-2 Kings’ win, Lemieux and Tkachuk got into it with about six minutes left. The two wrestled to the ground, with the latter coming up indicating that Lemieux had bitten him at some point in the scuffle.
The gritty Kings forward was offered an in-person hearing (via Zoom) on Tuesday, the NHL Department of Player Safety announced. The purpose of the in-person meeting gives the league the option to suspend him longer than five games.
We’ll see what comes of it.
More must-reads: